


alive (or still burning)

by closingdoors



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Civil War Team Iron Man, Extremis Pepper Potts, F/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Protective Pepper Potts, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 06:21:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15333717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/closingdoors/pseuds/closingdoors
Summary: For three months after, he builds a new suit practically every day, each designed to withstand the force of vibranium. They all fail.





	alive (or still burning)

**Author's Note:**

> i have survived  
> so many fires  
> i can no longer  
> tell if i am alive  
> or if i'm still  
> burning  
> \- pavana

In the dark, her chest glows orange. 

He shakes her awake. Pepper sighs and presses herself against him as her skin begins to cool.

 _Okay?_ He asks. Her hair catches up in his mouth.

Her hand is beneath his t-shirt, palming an arc reactor that isn't there anymore. Just scarred skin. The scars aren't entirely from the surgery.

In the morning, she'll be gone again. He still holds her when she speaks.  _I hate him._

It's unlike her, and it's not. He thinks maybe he should hate Steve Rogers too. 

 _I know,_ he says, and when he wakes in the morning the sheets are singed but empty.

 

 

 

He really hates talking about himself. He hates thinking about himself even more. 

The therapist crosses one knee over the other. She holds the pen between her index and middle finger and supports it with her thumb. Tony rubs at the oil stains on his wrists.

_When did the nightmares start, Tony?_

He doesn't tell her the truth because he's lied to himself for too long. The right words don't make it out of his mouth. He pays her triple her charging fee for wasting her time and returns the next week to say nothing once again.

 

 

 

He takes piano classes. The tutor has her hair tied up in a severe bun, the hair slick against her head, and no doubt solidified by hairspray. Whenever he makes a mistake, she pinches his wrist.

After one month, he is able to play the tune his mother used to. He quits learning. He doesn't know why he always insists on self-destruction.

 

 

 

The kid thinks he can offer him answers. The truth is that there is no right way to exist in this line of work. Steve Rogers saw to that. He robbed him of his carefully drawn black and white lines. 

He no longer knows what it means to be a hero. He's never been one, but Steve Rogers had, and now he isn't. The boy calls him every day and expects guidance he cannot offer. 

He almost breaks too many times. He almost calls just to say  _don't you get it? There are no good guys_. But that's not true, not really; he'd simply expected a man to be more than just that.

 

 

 

Pepper's apartment is open to too much sunlight. He wakes with a pounding headache and the morning sun in his eyes. 

She fixes him coffee for his hangover and wears a nightgown that's entirely too short when she sits beside him. She folds her legs and her bare thigh rests against his. 

She has wanted to move back in since Rogers left him for dead. It's the first and only time he's ever wanted to live alone. They exist in stolen moments that's he's not entirely convinced are real. 

 _You should give the boy some slack,_ she says, like it's easy, like he'd know how,  _he's young._

 _He's too young,_ he replies. She doesn't argue. 

 

 

 

He keeps the shield locked up in his workshop. There are scratch marks on one edge. Small, barely perceptible. Proof of where Steve had struck him. 

He still has the suit, too. 

For three months after, he builds a new suit practically every day, each designed to withstand the force of vibranium. They all fail. 

 

 

 

When he had flown that missile into the sky, Steve hadn't stopped him.

In the after, when he reunited with Pepper, she had clung to him tightly. The notification of the missed call still glowed on her lock screen.

Steve hadn't stopped him. Maybe he had been ready to lose him then. Maybe they all had.

It becomes dream-like to him. Steve telling him it's a one-way trip. Pepper's face glitching from the screen. The call that goes unanswered as the nuke lights up deep space.

He often wishes he hadn't made it back. He tells himself that would be beautiful. Pepper never would've left him. Steve wouldn't have plunged the shield into his chest. He would be floating through the stars, cold and dead and loved.

 

 

 

The nightmares vary from night to night but most follow the same basic structure. The car veers off of the road and crumples against the tree. Most of the time, it's Barnes, with his hand around his mother's neck. 

Some nights, it's Tony. He pulls his father's hair back and stares him in the eyes for too long a moment. 

In another, Barnes crushes Pepper's windpipe. She slumps against the leather of the chair after, eyes glassy and jaw slack. He waits for the orange glow in her skin. It doesn't come.

He wakes in a cold sweat. Pepper moves in two hours later. 

 

 

( _My father made that shield,_ he says, but his father had never been entirely  _his,_ and his father had always preferred the golden Steve Rogers anyway, and yet he drops the shield like it meant nothing in the first place.)

 

 

 

Maybe it had been his fault. He had considered Steve a friend in spite of the fact Steve had never shown him anything but contempt and disapproval.

Maybe that had been his father's fault. 

Pepper says she loves him and he knows she believes it to be true. He loves her recklessly in return. She is perhaps the only one to ever give him the option of happiness.

 

 

 

Pepper melts the pen in her hand when she watches a small piece on Captain America during the news one night.

It's not the first piece that has been run on him. It's not a surprise that six months later the public are still speculating about his disappearance.

Tony reaches over and uncurls her fist. He scoops the plastic from her hand even as it blisters his skin and deposits it in the trash. Her cheeks are red.

 _I'm sorry,_ she says, when he tries to touch her and it burns.  _I'm sorry, I can't -_

He ends up in suit so that he can hold her. He still sweats inside of it. 

He stabilised her of extremis, sure. She's not at risk of exploding at any moment. He could've ridded her of it entirely. He should've. But he refuses to leave her vulnerable, especially not when too many people he's considered friends have left him for dead.

She only cools down after an hour has passed. The iron between them makes her feel oddly distant. He frees himself of the suit and she heads upstairs to bed.

 

 

 

He goes back to wearing tailored suits and making public appearances and even helps the kid. 

He wonders if Steve Rogers is watching him from somewhere.

Sometimes, at night, Pepper will heat the tips of her fingers and run them along the ugly warped scars on his chest. It's the only way to stop it from feeling hollow. 

He thinks of Steve Rogers and that damn shield, of Barnes and his metal arm. Pepper's heated fingers press against his temples.

He always wears a tie and a waistcoat to cover up in public.

 

 

 

After he proposes, the therapist asks him:  _Are you happy?_

He doesn't say yes, but he doesn't say no either. He says:  _I'm happy with her._

It's the first truth he's told in this office. The therapist almost smiles. 

_Do you feel supported?_

_I support her. It's what I do,_ he tells her. Then, as an afterthought:  _She fixes me up._

It occurs to him that he's never known what it feels like to be supported. Everyone in his life has only ever fought against him. Everyone except for Pepper, who only fought to help him, especially when he didn't deserve it. 

This time, his therapist seems genuinely surprised.

He realises he's been speaking out loud.

 _I don't deserve her,_ he says, because once he's on the subject of Pepper, he finds it hard to stop himself.  _But she seems pretty intent on sticking around._

He doesn't return to therapy after that.

 

 

 

He wakes Pepper when there's no orange glow.

_Are you happy?_

She's half-asleep. Her arm ropes across his torso. Her cheek settles against his shoulder. 

 _Without question,_ she says, and for a moment he envies the way happiness comes naturally to her.  _You could be too, you know._

He stares up at the ceiling. She is the perfect amount of warm in his arms. 

 _I know,_ he says, and it feels like a beginning. 


End file.
